I don’t know much about Barbara Kruger. I just know that I love her work. This is normally the part where I give you a little history about the artist, but instead I am going to do something else. I am going to tell you why it is that these pieces hit me in the gut and make think.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the things women have to go through to make themselves presentable to the world. It’s not just a matter of looking a certain way, pretty enough to be worthy of attention but not so sexually available as to be prey for a rapist, but that women do things on a regular basis that cause them harm in order to be accepted in the world.

I wrote a while ago about the girl whose vagina was obliterated by pus after she got an infection from waxing- twice! More recently there have been problems with lead in lipstick. What about infections from manicures or toxins in nail polish? Did you know that manicurists suffer from high rates of respiratory diseases and pregnancy complications? What about all the stuff we put on our hair to make it shiny, straight, wavy, curly or another color? A lifetime of putting chemicals on our hair, face, nails and bodies has got to have some effect. Then there’s the shoes. Oh god I love how pretty high heels are but the pain from wearing them. Even our underwear causes us pain- whether it’s the discomfort from wearing a thong or the horrible things that happen when we wear something other than comfy cotton granny panties (yeast infections and the like).

And I haven’t even gotten into the risk of death from plastic surgery. The stuff above are just the little things we do to ourselves everyday. I’m certainly no feminist saint on the issue, I have one closet full of shoes that make me cry and another full of products to make my hair and skin perfect and a drawer full of matching bra and panty sets that make me spend the day uncomfortable.

Why do we have to spend so much time making ourselves into something we are not? Why is our default position when it comes to our looks that there is always room for improvement? Why does it seem that everything we do to “improve” ourselves involves some kind of pain, discomfort or risk?

Your body is a battleground means more to me than just how are reproductive freedom is usurped by old white men in business suits. Everyday we do things to our bodies so that we can get by as best as we can in the world with as minimum hassle as possible. It would be nice if we were actually free to be ourselves (whether that self is a lipsticked, high heeled soccer mom or an all natural makeup free ceo in birkenstocks) instead of having to put on an acceptable image for public consumption.